1 Forint Philadelphia

Lajos Kossuth arrived in the United States in December 1851 to raise money and political support for a renewed Hungarian uprising against Habsburg rule. These notes — printed by one of Philadelphia's most respected security printing firms, the same house responsible for much of early American banknote production — were never legal tender anywhere. They were fundraising instruments, sold to American sympathizers as both a political statement and a promissory claim on a future independent Hungarian treasury that never materialized.

Kossuth signed each note personally. That signature, combined with the Philadelphia imprint, makes the paper as much a relic of nineteenth-century American immigrant politics as it is a numismatic object.